Aspectos motivacionais relacionados à prática de atividade física em idosos e o impacto na qualidade de vida

Abstract

Currently has seen a rapid increase in the number of elderly in the world, and some alternatives have been created to promote health and assistance in the aging process. Furthermore, most of them are related to maintaining of an active lifestyle through the regular physical activity (PA). However is still possible to perceive an insufficient adherence of elderly to then, being necessary the understanding of this phenomenon. In this way, the study aimed to identify the motivational aspects that promote adhesion and the permanence of older adults in a program of AF oriented and impact of participation in their quality of life (QOL). The descriptive exploratory study was designed from two approaches – one Quantitative and other Qualitative. In the Quantitative component were interviewed 170 elderly (152 women), with a mean age of 69.8 (SD=6.14) years, participants in a social project in the city of Pelotas/RS. The elderly responded the following instruments: Questionnaire for sociodemographic characteristics; “Inventário de Motivação para a Prática de Atividade Física e Esportiva” (IMPRAFE-132); WHOQOL-Old and WHOQOL-Bref. The data collected were analyzed using the STATA 12.1 software, and the comparisons between the motivational levels with QOL scores, of the Kruska-Wallis test was used. The level of significance was set at 5%. In Qualitative component, motivation scores obtained through of IMPRAFE-132 have been used, and these were divided into tertiles (high motivation, medium and low). Thus, we randomly selected 21 elderly and divided into two groups according to their motivational level (high motivation and low motivation). For data collection, two sessions of focus groups with the elderly were conducted from a script of questions previously established. The sessions were recorded and after the transcription of the audio, we proceeded to categorize the data according to Analysis of Content. The project was approved by the Ethics Committee in Research of the School of Physical Education in the opinion 047/2012, and all seniors were invited to participate in the study, and signed a consent form. The results showed that Health presented the highest mean (116.66; SD=17.06) among all motivational dimensions. With respect to QOL domains of Social Relationships (84.71; SD=24.07) and past present and future activities (80.21; SD=22.17) had the highest scores. Was identified a positive association between QOL and motivation, were more motivated individuals had higher QOL scores (p<0.01). Through the focus groups it was identified that the importance of PA is related to the reasons for joining the project - maintenance or promotion of health and sense of well being. The positive perception of QOL was related to motivation for PA practice, because the elderly indicated that health is important for maintaining the same. In this way, it can be concluded that to perceive that the importance of PA, the elderly keep more engaged in the project, which has repercussions on their health and QOL, providing a aging with greater autonomy.